The present invention relates to a game device, and a method and program for processing an image of a person. The present invention more particularly relates to a technique for recognizing a position of a predetermined part from the image of the person, and a technique for filtering the recognized position.
Arcade game machines having a camera unit located in front of a player and proceeding with a game in accordance with a result of recognizing a position of a predetermined part, such as a hand, of the player from a player image captured by the camera unit are well-known. Such a game machine can provide players with a much wider variety of games than conventional game machines in which a controller is only operated with fingers.
However, the above game machines have the following disadvantage.
As the accuracy of recognizing the position of the predetermined part of the player is lowered by noise or moving objects (other than the player) accidentally caught in the player image, an approach of selecting the recognized position of interest from the vicinity of the previously recognized position is desirable when the position recognition is performed at predetermined time intervals. This approach, however, cannot achieve proper recognition of the position when the predetermined part of the player moves rapidly.
In addition, when the position of the predetermined part of the player is recognized and such a recognized position is used for a game process without any change, fluctuation in recognized position may be too intense to properly perform the game process. Therefore, an approach of applying a filter (a low pass filter) to the recognized position for conversion into an output suitable for the game process may seem desirable, but this approach degrades response of an output value to the movement of the predetermined part of the player. As a result, the game process cannot be rapidly changed to cope with the rapid movement of the predetermined part of the player, making the game less interesting.